Shoot

Yesterday five heavy beach stones from Sussex and I went on a trip back to my motherland in east London. The purpose of the trip: the cover shoot for The New Goodbye, which took place at Street Studios.

I’ve only been on a couple of full day shoots before, as a dog handler. Dogs require far less preparation that human models and are far less patient. And if it’s one thing models need, it’s patience. I can see why Gavin James Bower wasn’t that enamoured with the life.

Dashed aspirations of a career as a male model aside, hopefully the results of the shoot will speak for themselves. (There’ll be a few sneak peeks up here over the next month or so, no doubt.)

Everything went extremely well, notwithstanding a very cloudy period around lunchtime. Nicole and Saskia (the photographer and stylist) had a very firm vision of what that wanted to achieve, and I think we managed to fulfill it. Nicole and I’d been discussing the shoot for close to a month, so when it came to it, everyone had a pretty clear idea of how things were going to work.

By the time I arrived (last one there, to my shame) Saskia had had already begun to lay the set, which comprised a large canvas pasted with torn-out pages from old crime paperbacks for the base. Added to this were roses, a half tonne of dead branches scavenged from the canal side outside the studio and a black bin-bag full of leaves Nicole had collected from near her home. Oh, yes, and the model of course, as the centre-piece. The title and byline were sprayed onto the canvas using stencils Nicole had hand-cut. There was also some smashed china, which helps with the light apparently. (I reckon Saskia just likes breaking things.)

We were even treated to the pleasant interlude of Johanna Basford, who has created the illustrations for the app, stopping by to ply us with Percy Pigs and Colin Caterpillars as part of her flying visit to London before she jetted back to Dundee. And everyone got to listen to the demo of the track that will be packaged with the app.

The day was documented on camera in both video and stills. The video footage will be cut together as a documentary about the process, and along with some extra bits from the day. So it’ll be almost as if you were there too. There were a number of other people involved too, so thanks to Yong Ping, Caroline, Fumi, Dave and Graham, and Alec at Street for the use of the space. I'm sure this'll be one of the first places to get a preview of the work.

Oh, and remember me mentioning lugging the stones through three counties and across the city at the start of this post? It goes without saying they weren’t used. They’re now back safe and sound on my rockery, so the woodlice had somewhere comfortable to sleep last night.

Next up, fingers crossed, is filming the music video.

351 changes, and I'm done

The New Goodbye fast approaches a 'public-ready' state. (There are 351 minor changes to implement, and it's job done.)

It's a weird feeling, being on the verge of what is essentially self-publishing. It's not something I thought I'd ever be comfortable with, but, having read through the entire manuscript now, in an almost final state, I have to confess I've never been so confident in or so proud of a piece of writing, and I seriously think there's an audience for it.

It feels like it fulfills everything I want to achieve with my writing. Can an author really ask for more?

Added to this is the fact that it's going to be part of a very special art project, and I couldn't be happier with it. Johanna has completed work on her illustrated version of The Dialogue Of The Dogs and although it took her closer to seven days rather than seven years to complete, it is no less amazing for it: a two metre-long wordless narrative full of tiny detail. I'm not really one for superlatives, but it really is a wonderful achievement.

Thaw

I guess the term blogsplash is a good idea most years, but things haven't really thawed out too much round my neck of the woods.

Anyway, I've not had much sleep and so am waffling a bit. Aliya and I are taking part in Fiona Robyn's blogsplash, but both of us thought the other was doing it, so neither are sure quite what to do. I guess the best thing is to say the book looks great, find out more about it by taking a look at the Thaw page on her website, and maybe buying/borrowing, but at least reading the book.

More rules for writers

• Always finish a sentence with a full stop
• Don't make tpyos.
• Use capital letters at the beginning of proper nouns, jim.
• Lots of lovely mice that will hunt you down and want degrees in sociology.
• Don't throw in dream sequences or surreality for the sake of it.
• t is probably not going to enamour you to your readers.
• It's doubtful leaving sentences half-finished will eith

Covers

Doug Worgul's Thin Blue Smoke is finally coming out in paperback, and it has a luvverly cover. To whit:



In other news, Aliya and I and a bunch of MNW authors met up on Monday at Brown's in Covent Garden and a nice old chat was had by all. I'm sure Matt Curran will be posting some of the pictures he got the waitress to take in lieu of not bringing him any pudding.

And also, I suppose this should have gone at the top really, a winner has been selected to be the cover model for The New Goodbye. Congratulations to Cat Lane (she's the one in the picture below, which she also took). Nicole will be shooting the cover sometime early next month.



Also included in the app as they made the shortlist are Susie Harrison, Saroj Patel, Jaci Berkopec, Sam George and Alle Mind. Thanks to everyone else who submitted.

What’s new buckaroo?

I thought some of you might find it interesting to know what’s been afoot on the Red Diesel app front. Well, the biggest change is the title of the book. I figured (and Aliya agreed) that The New Goodbye was a more appropriate title for the novel itself, short story collections of the same name by the same author notwithstanding. This means that The New Goodbye short story collection is now out of circulation. So the few hundred out there who actually downloaded a copy now have in their digital paws something of a rarity. And who knows, maybe a collectible.

Where we’re at now is the photo shoot for the cover is halfway to organised, there’s a lovely title track by my good friend Rich Watson with a kind of Bond-theme/Take That vibe and I’m having a final sweep through all of the prose one last time.

The contents for the app are shaping up to look something like the following:

• The New Goodbye (50k novel, by me) with chapter plates by Johanna
• The Dialogue of the Dogs (by Cervantes) with a very special illustrated app-thingy by Johanna
• Three of my short stories: The Leaving Present (most bits previously unpublished), Twenty-One Again (from The Elastic Book of Numbers) and The Listening (from Gratia Placenti—I just need to check the copyright status of this one come to think of it)
• Several videos, including a little documentary of the cover shoot and the music video

So, it’s coming together; it’s coming on. And a few months and it should hopefully have arrived.

In the meantime I’m working on a feature about text legibility on websites and in apps for Web Designer magazine. Anyone suitably knowledgeable feel free to chuck me some pointers.

I'm getting that Kindling feeling...

The honest truth about my Kindle is that I love it.

Scott Pack has been blogging about his over the last week or so too. I reckon I probably prefer it a bit more than he does, but that's not to say he thinks it's without its merits. Go take a look after you've read this. His latest post is a comparison with the Sony Reader, which might help anyone (Matt) who's considering buying an e-Reader.

I own a batch of books I love, that I'll go back to again and again and the books as objects have sentimental value. There are maybe fifty or so of them. Other books I generally give away, or they end up dusty in the loft. So from now on, that collection won't grow as much as it did. I'll be using ebooks instead, especially for my commute, for which the Kindle is ideal.

What's so good about the Kindle? The main advantage over a computer (or phone or netbook, or, yes, iPad), is that, like all the other eReaders, it uses digital ink rather than a LCD or Plasma display, which is pretty much print-quality text on a screen. (If you've not seen e-ink in action before, it looks like someone has pasted some actual printed text on an acetate to a screen.) Reading from it really is a very similar experience to reading from print (except for light reflection on the screen in dim light.)

I've tried out the Sony Reader and the Sony Reader Touch in a couple of bookshops before, and also the horrible BeBook. Aesthetically, some people, like Scott, prefer the Sony product, some the Amazon. I side with Amazon. But the real advantage of the Kindle over the Sony devices--at least at the moment for UK users--is the Kindle has wireless access to Amazon's Whispernet (using a bunch of wireless networks, including 3G), which means you can use the Kindle without the need for a computer (other than the initial setting up of an Amazon account).

This is getting a bit wordy, so let's try some bulletpoints:

Why I like the Kindle:

• Easy to hold and don't need to hold pages open with your hand
• Shorter width of the page than a standard paperback means faster reading
• No headaches or eyestrain, unlike using an LCD screen
• Can hold thousands of books
• Wireless connection
• Can store other file types (although I think a USB stick or iPod Shuffle is better suited to this, it's good for emergencies)
• Free wireless inbox
• No distractions from other programmes (such as email) while you're reading

I'm also in the middle of editing a good few hundreds of pages of work. The Kindle has saved having to print these out for the final read-throughs, as you can also use the (not-magnificent) keyboard to annotate the work if you crunch it into mobipocket format.

So there you go, my tuppenny worth on using an ereader device. There're lots of other points to consider from the point-of-view of an author, and from the point-of-view of the publishing industry, but more on that another time.

(Bonus points to anyone who can spot the TV reference in the title of this post.)